Clinical Nutrition

The Clinical Nutrition Department at UCSF Benioff Children's Hospital Oakland is staffed by registered dietitians who specialize in pediatrics and who provide comprehensive nutritional care for both inpatients and outpatients. Every patient who comes through our doors has access to our highly-specialized team of dietitians and nutrition experts. From newborns with feeding difficulties to young adults with eating disorders, it's our goal to ensure that everyone gets the dietary support they need to thrive.

Why Families Choose Us

Meal Plans that Match Your Child’s Health and Your Family’s Life

Dietitians in our Clinical Nutrition department work to design meal plans that improve or maintain the health of patients whose diets require close monitoring.

Nutrition assessments and screening of all patients allow us to create a baseline for good nutritional health. We provide meal plans, monitoring, and follow-up support for kids on therapeutic diets, on enteral or parenteral nutrition support, and by family or staff request.

Additional Nutrition Programs and Support

A healthy diet and good nutrition aren’t just for children with medical conditions. That’s why many of our pediatric clinical nutrition services are available for picky eaters and children at risk for obesity.

Healthy Hearts is our weight management program, offering care and counseling for children between the ages of 2 and 18 who are overweight or obese and need additional education and support.

Kids Gettin' Fit Program

It's our way of encouraging healthy activity without making your child feel uncomfortable about his or her weight. This fun 6-week group weight management program is designed for children between the ages of 6 and 14, and features a series of dietitian-led classes that include educational activities involving food and nutrition, exercise, and support for behavioral change.

Pediatric Nutrition Services in the East Bay Area

In addition to in-hospital care, we provide clinical nutrition services at a number of our off-site clinics and specialty care offices, each of which is staffed by specialist dietitians with experience in their particular field.

Our outpatient clinics are located in Larkspur, Walnut Creek, and San Ramon to ensure that children throughout the East Bay have access to our nutritional support services.

Specialty Clinical Nutrition Services

A GI nutrition clinic offers nutrition education and support to children with gastrointestinal disorders. Our pediatric specialists and nutritionists work together to diagnose and treat GI nutrition disorders from gastric tube dependence to food allergy conditions.

Our pulmonary clinic is designed for children with special nutritional needs secondary to pulmonary diagnoses, including cystic fibrosis, asthma, and broncopulmonary dysplasia.

An endocrinology clinic provides initial and follow-up support for children who have either type 1 or type 2 diabetes.

The neurology clinic provides nutrition care for children with dietary concerns related to neurologic disorders. Many of the patients we see here work with our neurology dietician to coordinate ketogenic diet programs for epilepsy.

The metabolic clinic features medical nutrition therapy for children with PKU, galactosemia, MCAD deficiency, and other metabolic disorders.